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iPhone When it exists, Netshare is a "tethering" application. Insituations where you can't get onto a wifi network you can create anetwork between your computer and your iPhone, then the computercan use the phone's data connection for Internet browsing. It's notexactly single click setup (numerous walk-throughs have beenpublished, the MacRumors one will give you an idea), but it's something that could come inhandy in circumstances where you don't have anything else.

 There are other iPhone applications that do the same job asNetshare, but they require a jailbroken phone. Netshare's claim tofame is that it's the first 'official' (oh yes it is - we have theApple receipt) app that will work with a normal handset.

 In the absence of official comment from the Cupertino Curia, thevarious setup and use speed bumps provide one possible explanationfor why the app appeared in the App Store, and why it might makefuture manifestations (Nullriver says it didn't violate anyagreements, and is hopeful it will return). The networks (let's notjust beat up AT&T) don't want great swarms of customers settingup their iPhones as wireless base stations and running theircomputers off them all the time, so they're agin anything thatcould be imagined to facilitate this.

 But it's a stretch to imagine Netshare doing this - there's somehocus pocus to setup, in order to work it has to fight againstseveral aspects of the iPhone's design (the borked Bluetooth beingone of them), and hey - if you're in range of all you can eat wifi,what on earth are you doing using 3G instead? In most cases thewifi is going to be a lot faster.

 So is this why it appears in the App Store? Only people who're OKabout hand-tooling their network settings are likely to use it, theconnection will time out or the battery will get sucked dry, andthis one app is not about to bring the networks to their knees.Maybe at least somebody at Apple thinks this, but every time theypost Netshare, the networks phone them up and shriek at them?